Strange Bedfellows (APA)/Issue 019

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Strange Bedfellows (APA) · Issue 001 · Issue 002 · Issue 003 · Issue 004 · Issue 005 · Issue 006 · Issue 007 · Issue 008 · Issue 009 · Issue 010 · Issue 011 · Issue 012 · Issue 013 · Issue 014 · Issue 015 · Issue 016 · Issue 017 · Issue 018 · Issue 019

Strange Bedfellows 19 was published in November 1997 and contains about 85 pages.

cover of issue #19, the subject is Mulder and Krycek from The X-Files by Randym

It was the final issue.

There were thirty-two members sharing twenty-three subscriptions. There were twelve tribs to this issue.

From the OE

Hello, goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.

This is the last issue of Strange Bedfellows. (It's also shockingly late, due to—um— ZebraCon, EclectiCon, requests for delays. Thanksgiving, and an eleven-hour Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon. See what happens when I let my life interfere with my OEing?) It's been fun, folks, and I'm sorry I'm not up to doing it any more.

However, as you'll see in this issue, Jean Holmes is founding a successor to SBF, just as I founded SBF as a successor to the Terra Nostra Underground. Contact her for further info.[1]

Postage accounts will be closed; if I am still holding money for you, then either there is a check attached to this issue's roster, or I'll be sending you one soon. If you owe me money, there is a note of how much on the roster page, and please send it to me soon. Some non-US people have contacted me about shifting dollars around, and that's in hand. Take care, everyone.

Oops. I almost forgot to thank Leigh for the cover of this issue, and to thank Cat, who sent a cover in case I didn't already have one. Leigh's had already arrived, though, so Cat's ended up as an extra page of her trib. Thanks to you both!

Some Topics Discussed in "Strange Tongues"

  • entering the world of email for the first time
  • Babylon 5 and the five-year plan by JMS: "JMS is at the stage of having to pull the threads together, and with so many in the weave, he's bound to drop some"
  • real people and screen characters and labels
  • comments about a Highlander story mentioned in the last issue
  • vampires: different kinds, some discussion of the Anita Blake series by Laurel Hamilton
  • imagining a Xena/Buffy the Vampire Slayer story

Excerpts from "Strange Tongues"

Have been poised on the brink of e-mail for a while now, more or less equipped to plug in, but not quite ready to do it. I'm afraid the computer won't work, or the line won't, or something, which would be far worse than having too much to read. However, this will no doubt pass away with the mists of yesteryear, and one of these days, I'll show up on all your e-mail lists, and won't you be sorry!

I agree too much to argue. The Richie/Methos story [2]was a real story, and very readable, but it hit a lot of nerves. (That sound you just heard was everyone who hasn't read the story gagging over the concept.)

I don't suppose you've thought of a Rainault/]]Methos]] story, have you? Time travel — the long way as well as the short-cut way — has probably contributed as much to fandom as the invention of the penis. On the other hand, we could cut right to the heart of it and do Methos/Doctor Who, which might actually surprise both of them. I'm sure they'd both be ever so grateful for the diversion.

I'd say the quality of numinosity that makes those characters unique is partly based on their being fictional characters rather than people. If either (or both) of them were live people, the labels "bi," or "straight" or whatever could apply according to whether the desired partners happened to be all one sex, all the other, or mixed, however irrelevant that is to the selection criteria, as in: Servalan likes pretty challenges; Ivanova likes (as it's turned out so far) time bombs. Since they exist as images and our imaginations, the more general categorization can be ignored if it doesn't convey important information, and the particular and personality-based aspects become the only significant ones. Living people can take on this quality, but most usually in a frame: celebrity, royalty, artistic cachet, and so on. That makes them "characters," personages seen as outside normal existence and seen only in selected contexts. The sheer-force-of-personality effect that cancels any categorization and makes someone unique as a live person is made to be easily readable in screen characters such as Ivanova and Servalan (and — JMS wishes — Sheridan). I am as eager as any viewer to believe it, but does it happen often in real life? Thus, they can be numinously above categorization, as we are intended to see them, or we can take them out of the show's frame and apply the more general labels that we'd see them by in real life, such as counting which sex the partners are instead of what personality quirks governed their choice.

I don't know if anything will tone down JMS, who seems to have taken on an actual five-year mission, admittedly quite a job of plot and story in itself, never mind anything as strenuous as subtlety. Even ST gave up after three years of it (and should have given up after two and a half). Even SW took three years per movie and twenty years per trilogy. B5 moves very fast and densely compared to either of them. Maybe it's no wonder this picture of the future has inherited a lot of current society's aspects whole, just to save time and get on with the story.

Some Topics Discussed in "Untitled by B B"

Excerpts from "Untitled by B B"

I can't quite see the Net as the enemy of thought. But then, I also don't see media fandom as the enemy of literature, or genre fiction as the enemy of Real Art, or fiction as the enemy of truth. Plainly I am lost beyond saving.

Some Topics Discussed in "Cat's Darkling Zine"

Excerpts from "Cat's Darkling Zine"

Hey, it's not interest in the APA I lost, it's interest in the effort of actually writing anything, which I've always hated anyway. Of course, some of you might not understand what difficult- there is in writing two pages of slash natter or even general natter. You're lucky. Me I just wonder why I've been in APA's since 1980 when I hate the process so much. I could content myself with the ecstatic fusion of communing in the adoration of the same slash fandom, but you can't really do that without communicating. So much for inner logic.

Nick himself is okay, but Lacroix is a Divine Entity's gift to slashdom. He's so intense. So striking. So pale, when he dresses in black. The moment where, in my mind, it went *click, I'm hooked* was an episode where the Knightcrawler is whispering words in his mike, and Nick is actually listening. Why would he need a daily no, nightly fix of Lacroix crooning on how much he wants Nick to talk to him, Lacroix being more than friend, father, lover? And the punch line: close up on Lacroix's lips "I love you", cut to Nick (is he smiling ?). Pause. My heart skips a beat, because 1 don't believe for a single second this is meant for the radio listenership. No it is meant for Nick's ears alone. (Lacroix is quite an exhibitionist there). And then, Lacroix adds : "Al". I couldn't believe I was being shown anything so blatant. That pause *couldn't* have been pure coincidence.

What Nick says to his partner: "he's an acquired taste", means he has acquired it. So have I. The episode "Father's day" was so sweet. [J] fears that it will mislead potential slash viewers into dismissing the relationship as being a fatherly one. I feel it was a good excuse to show to the mundanes such a driven, emotional relationship. And fatherly relationships have never stopped slash fans before, up to Henry/Indy slash.

Does Lacroix strike anyone as being the fatherly type ? He said what he wanted: he wanted it all, friend, father lover, because in his heart, he's just a child who doesn't know about reality imposing limitations. This is possible, because most of the time, due to his nature, he is powerful enough to impose *his* limitations on reality.

I love the ambivalence in Lacroix : wanting Nick back on his terms, but sometimes giving in and almost trying it on Nick's terms (He did save the mafioso's son for Nick's sake). This gets him a reward (an emotional moment with Nick when he gives back the watch), but it still doesn't give him Nick.

'Lucien': the root of the word is 'light' and 'Lacroix' means 'the cross'. What sort of name is this for a Vampire ? A nice one. And they speak this almost perfect French with this faint, delicious accent.

Some Topics Discussed in "Untitled by E R"

Excerpts from "Untitled by E R"

[I feel] rue, mainly. This makes two out of three of my apas which die this month, and the slash round robin [3] as well, looks like. The Q/L [4] novel is stalled, and blocking passage of anything else; my last few zines have been pretty much a publishing-for-on endeavor; the net beckons with the promise of massive quantities of something I'm not sure I want any longer. Methinks, it may be time to retreat and regroup. Retreat, anyway. To those encountered along the way -- hail, and well-met. I look forward to meeting you again in another place, another fandom. If not, LL&P, you know the drill. Blessed be.

I note with some interest that, like Trek, Muncle is undergoing a phase shift, from the stage technically known as BeatIllyaUp, to a totally different and radically changed level called BeatNapoleonUp. Where next? The mind boggles.

Exile's Song, by Marian Zimmer Bradley. When this came out in hardcover, a number of my friends who are rabid Darkover fans promptly got it and promptly, and loudly, hated it. I waited for the paperback. And it's not that bad. It's just not that good. The writing is fluid and supple and there's sometimes startlingly vivid imagery. But there is no digression too minor to explore, the plot disappears about 2/3 of the way through and the main character wavers in interests, aims and, well, character throughout. I've heard the book is actually written by Adrienne Martyne-Barnes, which is a disappointment; I expect better of her. (MZB has had a serious stroke and lost language. Any recent books are ghost-written). I'll keep the book. But I won't reread it.

Point of Hopes, by Melissa Scott and Lisa Barnett, is a fantasy paperback set in an alternate medieval earth. It's also a quite good Bodie&Doyle alternate universe (intentionally so, I am assured.) Ray (Rathe) is a cop (sort-of); Bodie (Eslinger), a resting professional soldier; both trying to solve an abducted children mystery. No slash, but a hint they'd put it in if they could. Recommended for B&D (or medieval fantasy) fans.

You're being awfully hard on poor Worf. He's the first person in all the Trek series to have a serious relationship (def: lasting longer than one episode) and he's had three of them. The guy must have hidden talents. Not to mention the fact than even if the marriage lasts the rest of Jadzia's life that's still only a summer romance to the symbiote And if you think Worf could (or would even want to) clip Dax's wings, you're seeing different characters than I am.

Well, we'll probably keep in touch for a while, [B], if only because you're the only other person I know who writes letters.

Has anyone ever written a B7/Trek story wherein it is revealed that they live in the same Federation —just looking at it from radically different POV's?

I agree that Mary Millard's stories tend to be, um, on the sweet and fluffy side. But she just published the zine, the stories were written by Linda White, Jane Terry and Suzan Lovett, and are neither sweet nor fluffy. Go figure.

I tend to agree with you that Buffy stands by herself as an icon of gender-bending, female on top, social-line crossing, slashability at its best--without ever offering the opportunity for actual slash. You mentioned that the flirtation between Buffy--female, slayer, alive—and Angel--male, vampire, dead--seems to be what the show uses instead of slash. I would agree and say in fact that the societal boundary bending that slash does is here subsumed into the metaphysical boundaries between the quick and the dead; that dancing on that particular borderline consumes a lot of the energy otherwise required for sexual hi-jinks. Although I still say delectable Giles comes across at least as bi (although also not in the least interested in the kids.)

On your urging I tracked down Poltergeist: Legacy and was instantly hooked. The plots are hokey, the special effects primitive and the dialog so incredibly stupid at times I resort to re-writing it in my head as I hear it (an ability honed on Chris Carter shows). I wish I could say I liked it in spite of its flaws (I really wish I could say that) but for whatever reason, I'm enjoying the heck out of it. Do you realize, that with Derek Delint and Jacob (can't remember full/actor's name) the elder mentor from The Pretender, there are now two Dutch men on American television? Add Rutgar Hauer — (Yes, please. Pretty please. Any where, any time)--and well. One is a statistical anomaly. Two is just plain weird. Three signifies an underground conspiracy to take over The Hague, the EU and from there The WORLD! AhhEEE!

A friend lent me a Sentinal zine. I was surprised to find out, upon perusal, that the policeman is an idiot. Walking around calling everybody 'Chief' all the time. Inspector Dim has nothing on it. For some reason, that took the curse off the fandom for me. I still think they're both ugly and the show stupid (I've done too much research on shamanism. This stuff isn't even a poor knock-off.) but now it's also rather charming, two lost innocents bumbling around the big bad world, no idea what they're doing or getting into. It also brings up a slash premise I haven't seen yet. Considering that as far as I can tell Jim has little or no control over his enhanced senses, and depends on Blair wholly for guidance — if Blair were attracted to Jim, would Jim be able to reject him and risk Blair leaving? It isn't like he can pick up a guide on any street corner. Jim's sanity and his life depends on Blair; is it love or barter? If he can't say no, is it sex or rape?

Some Topics Discussed in "Ghost Speaker"

  • comments about the film, "The Singer Not the Song," should one slash a character who is a priest?
  • being able to write Highlander fiction now that she's realized Duncan MacLeod is an "arsehole"
  • "Highlander" - "a brief and pointless essay on my pet hate in Duncan/Methos slash (my pet hate because I do seem to pick it up and cuddle it and make it purr even while assuring everyone that I hate it)." (comments on the episodes Revelations/Come A Horseman and how they make characters twist out-of-character)
  • literary vampires, types and motives
  • every show has a male slut
  • comments about Lucifer Falling, see that page
  • con report for WriteOn, see that page

Excerpts from "Ghost Speaker"

I heard from Shoshanna that someone has possibly volunteered to take on the OE job. If so, I salute their willingness to adopt a thankless task where no one will ever notice what they are doing unless things go wrong, and will happily join the new slash apa and hope that all of you will do so as well. If not, well, it's been good; I've richly enjoyed being in this apa, and reading all of you. Since there's no help, then let us kiss and part; nay, I have done; you get no more of me." Well, not unless you want to read Highlander fanfic or weird ST:tng fanfic, of course. Take care. Be good. We'll meet again.

Methos/Krychek [sic]? Clearly these are both the sluts of their series. It is my theory, which I am happy to share with anyone interested or uninterested, that certain characters in almost any series are sluts. This has nothing to do with how often they get laid canonically, and everything to do with how easy it is to throw them into bed with someone in their own series or another. For example, Avon is the slut of B7, though Vila runs him a close second. Spock is the slut of ST:TOS. Bodie is the slut of Profs, And Methos, oh yes, Methos is just a slut.

The slash relationship in the film The Singer Not the Song (you didn't think I was discussing this purely for my own amusement, did you?) is between the new priest and the bandit The priest never expresses an opinion of the bandit except in general terms that anyone's soul is worth saving. (And, twice, in ferociously public prayer against the bandit's crimes.) In a very odd conversation between the bandit and the girl who is in love with the priest (she is basically a plot-device) where the bandit virtually admits that he too is in love with the priest (I know how you feel because I feel the same way). Now the question is, not could we write a slash story in The Singer Not The Song, because of course we could — it would require a little bit of logistics work, but no worse than the slash story set in Edge of Darkness. The question really is: When a character has vowed himself to celibacy, do we have a right to break his vows on his behalf? Even if he'd enjoy it? Perhaps especially if he'd enjoy it?

I think you're underestimating your "audience of six" for your Well of Loneliness Bab5 slash novel [5]... I'll read it even if all we get of Ivanova and her Centauri lover making love is And that night they were not divided. I will read it because you are a magnificent writer, and the thought of getting a whole novel of yours into my hands is making me salivate, in a literary manner of speaking. I cannot believe that in the entire US slash fandom (if that's where your original calculation of audience came from) there are only 6 fans of sufficient intelligence, wit, and insight to appreciate that the chance of reading a novel by Barbara Tennison is something that doesn't happen often enough.

Meantime, instead of going retrograde summer to B7 or forward into the past with B5 I seem to have gone sideways and started writing Highlander. Yes, I know I kept saying I couldn't do it because Duncan MacLeod is a hero. That was before I realised (thanks to an insight offered by another fan) that in fact Duncan MacLeod is an arsehole. At least half of what I have been writing is crossovers, and not a lot of it is slash in the sense of passionately sexual relationships between two men. (Not unless you count murder as a passionately sexual relationship, which of course an Immortal very well might, swords are traditionally phallic, after all.) The slash couplings that I do see are, more or less in chronological order as I perceived them, Duncan MacLeod/Joe Dawson, Methos/Duncan, and Methos/Richie. (The fan who implied the insight about MacLeod being an arsehole is a Duncan/Richie or Connor/Richie fan, which is perfectly plausible as a background, of course, it's happening relationship to a story, but not where the focus is falling). The odd thing is that though Methos/Richie works for me, and Methos/Duncan are an awfully cute couple, the couple who fit my definition of a magic couple are the pair I've never managed to write slash about yet; MacLeod/Dawson. They got to me in several episodes, beginning with the one that originally hooked me on the series in the first place, "The Colonel"... that Dawson is a man of principle, but that MacLeod is the one person in the world for whom Dawson will break all his rules. Now if only I could convince myself that they can touch..,, and that anything more would happen than MacLeod breaking Dawson's heart — again.

Some Topics Discussed in "Kiken na Futari"

  • a long essay on "Japanese slash" and what makes it different from "Western slash" (introspection/lack of, the influences of Christianity, cultural differences about conformity and imagination
  • pages from a 1978 "Julie" Japanese fanwork
  • the challenges of alien genitalia

Excerpts from "Kiken na Futari"

I really hope you are wrong about non-net fandom dying out.

Oh no! This cannot be the end of the APA! I'd volunteer to take it myself, except the postage from Tokyo would be beyond prohibitive. Alas — as one of those deprived souls as yet offline, Bedfellows has been wonderful for keeping me in touch with both my fellow slash fen and with what is currently 'hot' in western slash. I can, within reason and with delays, get a hold of a lot of western programming, but I have to know what to ask for.

I'm not surprised you are having some trouble with the sex scenes for your tome. Given the number of Centauri sexual "organs" (?) and the fact that a partner is supposed to have matching "receptacles", locating them physiologically and then working out a way for a human to stimulate them seems a challenge. However, an audience of six (do you include me?) is still more than I tend to get for my seriously obscure fandoms.

I agree with you that it is perfectly possible for someone to have a gay relationship without analyzing it - it is just real hard for us westerners. I would believe it easily of most Japanese I know. Few Japanese seem to go into reasoning things out. I would have no trouble accepting a couple of Japanese characters (anymore than I have problems with anime ones) just "going with the flow".

Some people use yaoi for slash based on media and June for originals, but then why the need for the extra billing of 'original June'? Actually, Japanese fandom is pretty good at coining words, but not so good at limiting them. Mary who works for Fusion Prod, which puts out yaoi or June fanfic collections professionally says they are pretty much the same meaning. I think there is a difference between the words, but the differences are more tendencies. Yaoi tends to be less developed and tends to be based on anime. June tends to be original. The sales section at Comicate is June. Shojo style art with no sex and maybe with gags can be called yaoi, but sounds odd referred to as June. June seems to need a real homosexual relationship. Alas, what you like to read could be called either.

Interesting point on what you disagree with in Quintin Crisp's view of homosexuality. I remember a B7 fan story with this idea. Blake is gay — it is natural for him and not something he chose or particularly wanted. Avon is primarily straight, but perverse and goes after Blake just because Blake & he as lovers is the most perverse relationship he could think of.

Some Topics Discussed in "Mardi Gras Favors"

Excerpts from "Mardi Gras Favors"

I volunteered to become OE for this next transformation of the original apa TERRA NOVA [sic] UNDERGROUND which became STRANGE BEDFELLOWS which will become ___________? because I want this apa to continue.

So what shall we name this next phase of our apa? Please send your ideas on a note attached to your tribs before the next deadline of - February 1. Policies, mostly the same are on page 3.

I will send out a list of members and copy count in early January.

Will paper fandom fade? No. Remember a few months ago when AOL's email facility went down for half a day? That was an accident. But it's easy enough to cause deliberately. That's one of the problems with online fandom - too many accessible chokepoints. Paper fandom is much more diffuse and more difficult to choke.

While reading thru the New York Times at work, Monday's Aug. 18, I was surprised to see an article "What Xena did during her summer vacation" on its front page. This article is about fanfic for various media shows and lists file names for five of the most popular sites, especially the members.aol.com etc etc with its gen & slash version. This article reprinted In the entertainment section of Sunday's Houston Chronicle and has probably been reprinted in many other papers. Does anyone still think fanfic, even slash is underground?

Some Topics Discussed in "The Magic May Return"

Excerpts from "The Magic May Return"

OK, I'm quite willing to admit it. The net doesn't kill APAs. People kill APAs, and have. RIP.

Yappari, I'll miss this regular visitor. The theory of slash has its own irresistible fascination. The discussions that happened in the heyday of this APA were witty, intelligent, informative, sometimes hilariously funny, deeply engrossing and always compulsively readable. Their absence will leave a gap which, alas, slash fiction itself isn't likely to fill.

I think I've finally concluded that I'm not a slash fan. I find the slash stories that I've read to be - well, lugubrious, and earnest, and very very sincere, and not a hell of a lot of fun to read. Yes, and that includes the 'light' ones. Reading slash is like chomping one's way through underdone cake. One isn't even allowed to giggle. OK, I know the parallel to slash is grand opera, which is equally as humorless, overheated, romantic and ridiculous. But there's always Mozart, not to mention Strauss, to cleanse the palate after a dose of sturm und drang. Where's the light, frivolous, enjoyable stuff in slash? Isn't there anyone who can believe that My Guys might have other things to think about than the wrenching drama of their emotional life?

What slash reminds me of mostly is what the world felt like when I was thirteen years old, with physiology, temper and everything else wildly out of control. 'The hours of fuss and fury', as Auden put it; the desperate terrible *importance* of one's feelings and the other person's feelings and life in general; the way life resembled being in a small boat on a stormy sea; the occasional giddy highs, no doubt, but also the black and tempestuous- and chronic- lows. Could this be revenge-making the guys feel not only like women but like women at the worst times of their life: in menarch [sic] or menopause or in the grip of PMS?

[...]

The most damning thing that can be said about slash was said by [S]: that most slash characters are people you wouldn't want to know in real life. It's fiction about dweebs and dorks, neurotics and borderline psychotics, **all** of whom do nothing but natter about their feelings and get laid. Ten pages of nattering, five pages of fucking, ten more pages of nattering about getting fucked, five more pages of fucking to lead to another ten pages of nattering...

I suppose it's all marginally more interesting than daytime television, if you except the nature shows, but still. It's not my kind of fun. So I leave the genre, if not the APA, with no regrets to be going and a good deal of relief that I don't have to try to like this stuff any more. Good-bye, all.

Some Topics Discussed in "With Friends Like These..."

  • anal intercourse in fan fic
  • slash vids and the controversies at MediaWest*Con
  • Kerr Avon's lack of respect for other people
  • a reprint of "Rhythm" by Mick C. ("Here's another M/K story, culled off the net. It was, I believe, the winner of the "small spaces" story challenge, even though it didn't quite meet the all the specifications. This is possibly my favorite M/K story that's short enough to print here, even though there's no real smut in it."

Excerpts from "With Friends Like These..."

Ah well, it's been fun. Thanks, [S], for all the work you put into this. (And a very classy way to wrap things up, too, giving us a last issue to say good-bye.

[...]

Well, I guess that's it. It was lovely being here and I'll miss you all. If anyone feels the burning need to continue discussion/tell me how wrong-headed I am, my e-mail and snail-mail addresses are up top. (Please note my new e-mail address!))

Basically, I see Avon is a sexist snob. An enormously appealing sexist snob, but nevertheless a sexist snob. He did not believe any female was truly his equal. That's why it was always the women who managed to fool Avon: Servalan, Anna, and Piri all found him an easy mark. Don't get me wrong, he did respect Soolin's and Jenna's abilities — just not their intellects. And speaking of intellects...Avon was also something of an intellectual snob. Which, in the Federation, pretty much translated into class snobbery. I don't doubt that he was extremely fond of Vila ~ in the same way a man might be fond of his favorite dog. He liked Vila, but he did not respect him. (While Avon might have eventually chosen the same course over Malodaar had it been Tarrant or Blake instead of Vila, I think he would have hesitated a lot longer.) And, even though Blake was supposedly an Alpha, Avon didn't have intellectual respect for him, either. Blake, in his view, was a foolish idealist who'd never been quite right since the Federation messed with his head. Now, I'm not claiming that Avon respected Tarrant as an equal. I don't think Avon thought of anyone as being his equal.☺ But Tarrant was male, and also an Alpha. He graduated from an esteemed university (the Federation Space Academy) and could hold his own with Avon when it came to calculating dynamic flux equations and the like. They read the same books ("Rumours of Death"), and Tarrant could sometimes surprise Avon with his knowledge. (In "Terminal," Tarrant knows about the Terminal scientific experiment while Avon has never heard of it; Tarrant gives Avon physics lessons in "Dawn of the Gods.") And ~ Tarrant is 15 or 20 years younger than Avon. In a couple of decades, Tarrant will be formidable indeed, and Avon knows it. So...Avon respects Tarrant, in a way he does not respect any of his other crewmates ~ for his potential.

The furor over slash vids at MediaWest has been, IMO, greatly exaggerated. For years, it was just an unwritten rule that no one entered slash vids in the MediaWest music video contest. A couple of years ago, someone broke that rule, entering a SW Luke/Han vid ~ thereby forcing the concom to deal with the issue of slash music videos. As I recall, they decided to show the slash music videos separately from the others, so people who wanted to avoid them could do so. They decided that this year the slash vids would not be eligible to win awards, but that in the future they would have separate awards for slash and gen vids. Not an ideal solution, true, but 1 think it arose more out of disorganization than slash-bashing. MediaWest seems to be trying to be both family-friendly and slash-friendly, with less than spectacular success.

This insistence on [anal] intercourse is a real problem with the Mulder/Krycek pairing, since they usually end up doing it in abandoned missile silos and Siberian gulags, etc. - places without much in the way of amenities. No lube, no condoms ~ and it's generally not practical to get completely undressed, either, due to freezing cold and imminent danger. I suspect real people in such a situation would likely go for hand jobs, oral sex, or frottage, but it seems it's just not slash without anal sex. Which means either highly unrealistic sex, or strange (and strangely convenient) lubricants like yogurt and lip balm [6].

Some Topics Discussed in "When Correctly Viewed"

  • some possible futures for this apa, perhaps in electronic form
  • Alison Bechdel, wings, personal journey, identification, physical attractiveness
  • the growing importance of the internet and fandom

Excerpts from "When Correctly Viewed"

[S], you're a hero for keeping the apa going for so long. Many thanks for being such an excellent OE. It's been a fine and memorable experience.

I'm very sad to hear of the impending demise of SBF, even though I fear I have contributed to the problem by not contributing, as it were.

My major excuse is that I've just moved halfway across the country and started a new job...

[...]

... the location is very remote, and I'm not sure how long I can survive emotionally amidst the cornfields. Fandom helps, of course, especially with nightly electronic contact with the fannish world.

Until recently I would have said that net fun was an addition to paper fandom and not a replacement for it, but at last I'm beginning to conclude otherwise, at least as far as apas and letterzines are concerned. When you can get a nightly fix of fannish pleasures in small doses, there's so much less incentive to make the effort to write out a long meaty apa trib.

OTOH, the Tarrant apa is still going strong even though many of the members chat constantly with each other both on line and in person as well. And there are two Blake apas [7]even though the one Avon apa has folded. Maybe it has something to do with both Tarrant and Blake still being the interests of small minorities who have to band together, while something like an appetite for discussion of slash in general can now be fed in any number of places. I suppose that's a good thing, really!

So far, at least in B7, paper fiction zines seem to be surviving. A typical pattern is for a story to be first posted to a mailing list and then picked up by an editor, polished and rewritten by the author, and published on paper. It works pretty well sometimes.

Publication on a friendly private mailing list can be a good way for shy writers to get over their nervousness, since you can tell yourself that it's just for fun and doesn't really count. You also get instant feedback, of course.

There do seem to be fewer B7 zines all the time, though. I'm not sure if it's just that one fandom or if it's true of fandom in general.

A random thought: I wonder whether anyone would be willing to do the work to resurrect SBF as an e-mail mailing list? Of course, a major component of this hypothetical plan would be dragging Certain Members on line by hook or by crook.

I see what you mean about JMS being oblivious to the fact that his important female characters tend to come across as tokens. He strikes me as typical of a certain kind of SF boy who wants to be supportive of women (or at least to be seen that way, she said cynically) but doesn't quite Get It. Harlan Ellison used to be rather like that, 20-something years ago.

Until recently I thought that f/f didn't do much for me, but I've since read some stories that were plenty hot. I suppose it just depends on who the writer is, and whether other aspects of the story push any buttons. I do see your point, though, about how f/f doesn't really solve the problem of equalizing relations between men and women, at least not directly, because it goes off in another direction altogether. Making a powerful, appealing female character gay is kinda sorta implying that if you want to be equal to men, you can't have sex with them. This is an idea that some of us find profoundly distressing.

[...]

One of the f/f stories that really did it for me was, to my extreme surprise, a B5/B7 crossover in which Servalan rapes Delenn (a story currently in progress on the Space City mailing list). I would have sworn that I wouldn't like a rape scene with a female victim, so I was downright embarrassed at the way I responded to this one. I suppose that just as I enjoy seeing Avon being worked over by practically anyone, male or female, I must also like seeing Servalan have her evil way with some attractive victim, male or female. In the story, Servalan also had an evil male assistant helping her with Delenn, so there was a bit of het interest too. (Other f/f stories I've enjoyed were a sweet Dayna/Lauren and a steamy Dayna/Servalan fragment. And that drawing by Cat of Soolin and Servalan generated a distinct pleasurable twinge, too.)

enjoyed your description of your response to "Consequences." I think this possibility of rewriting the universe over and over again is a big part of the appeal of media fan writing in general— having one's fictional cake and eating it too. Of course, in B7 this tends to involve killing off all or most of the characters, only to resurrect them in the next story. The old David Chiang & Ti Lung movies were rather like that, too; most of them ended with one or both main characters dying, but you knew the two guys would be back in only slightly different roles in the next flick (and the things were churned out at the rate of about one a month, making the end result not unlike a TV series). And the way you saw the same two basic characters over and over again in various different periods of Chinese history was strangely reminiscent of all the historical AUs in Pros fandom.

I was interested by your comment that for you, part of the kick of slash is seeing "deviance" in men who would otherwise be perfect ideals of the patriarchy. I see your point, I think, but I'm not sure it quite works for B7. To me part of the appealing pathos of that show is that whether or not we postulate the Federation as being sexually tolerant, it doesn't matter to Our Heroes, since they are outlaws anyway. They already have a price on their heads regardless of what they may be doing sexually, or how the mainstream society feels about it. Theoretically that should put them in the same sort of category as the slashable women who are already "deviant" because they are female and powerful, although coming into that category from the other end of the scale (female and powerful — male and outcast), as it were. But in the case of the B7 guys, this quality makes them more slashable rather than less, at least for me.

Re: MediaWest, I didn't hear anything about banning slash videos, but I wasn't paying attention, so it's possible, I suppose. What did annoy me to no end was the collapse of the FanQ awards, because the person who was supposed to be handling them disappeared! And here I'd been hoping that the awards would get back on track, after all the scandals about suppression of slash entries and whatnot. In the end they did give out awards, several hours after the cancellation of the ceremony; but I'm pretty sure that those were based solely on the ballots filed at the con itself, with all the mail-ins (including the ones from non-members who had paid $1 each for the privilege of voting!) ignored.

I'm developing a bit of an interest in B5, though I still only watch it sporadically. I have not seen enough of the Sheridan/Delenn romance to comprehend its ickiness, but I'll take your word for it. My guess is that some people (presumably including JMS) think that kind of role-playing is what romance fundamentally is. I think it's why certain kinds of slash stories are written as if they were soppy het romances; perhaps the authors just haven't yet figured out that there are other possible kinds of romance, despite having in slash an ideal setup for something different.

Re: whether it would be possible for a pretty-boy character on a U.S. TV show to be black, without the character becoming a buffoon of some sort, I am more optimistic than you. Couldn't you see someone like Prince (now known as Squiggle) in such a role? I remember vividly how I first heard of him. It was back when he first became popular, in the very early 80s. I was telling some of my Japanese language students about Julie and how much I liked him, and they suggested that there was this new star, androgynously pretty and with flashy clothes, that I'd probably like...

I assume most of the rest of you are familiar with the Dykes to Watch Out For comics? If not, run right out and get them, because they are very funny indeed, not to mention wonderfully true-to-life even for non-lesbians.

I just discovered that the author/artist is an Oberlin grad ('81). This past weekend there was a conference, organized in part with her help, called "A Tip o' the Nib: Celebrating Gay and Lesbian Cartoonists." In addition to Alison Bechdel, the guests were Howard Cruse (Stuck Rubber Baby, also the first editor of Gay Comics, Diane DiMassa (Hothead Paisan), and Rupert Kinnard (Cathartic Comics), each of whom gave a presentation about his/her work. Apparently this was the first gay cartoonists' conference ever (although there have been things like group exhibitions), which I was surprised to hear.

The reason I mention this here, in addition to just general interest, is because of something in Alison Bechdel's presentation. She showed slides of her drawings going back to age 5! The interesting thing was, they were all of men, and mostly of big, hulking tough guys at that. She didn't draw women at all in her younger days. She said she wasn't at all sure why that was, but she thought she must have been fascinated by the concept of masculinity. Then, she said, around the time she was in college the guys started to grow wings —— and she showed slides of pictures, very well drawn by now, of homely men in business suits with angel-type wings! It was clear to her, she said, that growing the wings was painful but somehow necessary. And then she came out (to herself, I gather, as well as to the world). She said it was a very intellectual, Oberlin-type coming-out, in which she worked through all the political ramifications before she ever actually had sex. At first she found it very difficult to draw women, but she discovered that if she consciously thought of them as lesbians, then it was much easier.

I'm still mulling over all this trying to digest my thoughts about it, but I couldn't help but think that there was something vaguely slashy about the process. Something to do, perhaps, with women having a hard time conceptualizing themselves as full human beings, because the popular culture gives so little support to that concept, and so adopting male personae for purposes of art and/or fiction. She also discussed briefly the strange ways that female characters are shown in male-drawn comics, a thing that has bothered me for some time, and said that she had never seen male characters drawn in a sexy way until she looked at comics by gay men. She showed an illustration of a hunky guy by a gay male cartoonist, with sexual characteristics exaggerated in much the same way that we see in, say, Blondie, but take for granted there because it's a female.

What I thought at this point is that what no one has ever seen is a comic in which the female characters (whether they are humans or animals) are the norm, and only the male characters are marked in some way as sex objects. Mind you, I'm not at all sure I would actually like this (even though it corresponds approximately to my personal view of the universe), but it would certainly be interesting as a way of pointing up how common and taken-for-granted the reverse is.

The closest approach I think I've ever seen to that idea of ordinary women and sexy men is the work of Yasuko Aoike (Eroica), which may be one reason why I like her stuff so much. Her women do tend to be ciphers, though, and mostly not terribly interesting in themselves; often pretty in a conventional way, but you can tell that she's not as interested in them as in the men.

Wendy Pini draws both sexes very sexily.

Alison Bechdel draws women as real, highly individual people, in a way I find very appealing emotionally if not sexually. Now if I could only find someone who did that, and did sexy men.

Which led me to yet another Theory of Slash, although it's obviously only a partial one, since it doesn't take into account the lesbian slash fan. I wonder whether in some cases women are convinced that it's just not OK for them to lust after men unless they do it in a male persona, because men are so seldom presented as lust objects at all, and when they are, they are more likely to be presented as lust objects for other men than as lust objects for women. Good Girls are not supposed to care what men look like, to think it's fine to marry a man twenty years older as long as he's a Good Provider, and so forth and so on. For someone who's really internalized all that, slash may be the only way of expressing a desire for attractive men.

Some Topics Discussed in "Notes from Tomorrow"

  • origami
  • personal challenges and fanac, apologies

Excerpts from "Notes from Tomorrow"

By the grace of our lady, St. Shoshanna the Patient, I'm pushing back the compile date because I just plain spaced it out. I won't presume to offer mail comments as I've been dreadfully inactive of late and so I can't really jump in at this point, when there's no opportunity for anyone to reply. However, as a member since the inception of TNU (except for my brief lapse when I minac'd out!), I figured I should at least take the opportunity to catch you up on what's been happening in my life before the final curtain falls on our beloved APA. As always, my intentions were noble, but my performance was less than pristine. Let me explain (does anyone really care about the current excuse?

[...]

If there is in fact a sequel to SBF, I will do my best to join, and to PARTICIPATE (as I have not been doing lately)... I don't even have the excuse of email, as I've unsubscribed to all my e-lists except the Word-a-Day, ACAFEN, and Sandbaggers (traffic on which is usually minimal). I'm still MOOing a bit, but not nearly as much as I was. I don't know where the time goes.. Somehow it seems like I should have far more, but I'm always running late (living up to my name, as usual). So, farewell for now, with hopes that I'll be more active and participatory when/if a new APA forms up. Until then, abiding thanks to Shoshanna for her great work as OE, and to the rest of you for continuing to provoke and entertain me in spite of my lack of reciprocation (especially the always stimulating and thoughtful Barbara!); sleep loose, dream well when you dream, and forgive me for my lapses.

References

  1. ^ This successor appears to have not made it off the ground.
  2. ^ reprinted in the previous issue?
  3. ^ Could this round robin be "Wonderframe Slash Round Robin"?
  4. ^ "Q/L" certainly stands for Quantum Leap, but it also may be a creative way of notating it is a Quantum Leap slash novel.
  5. ^ This novel may be an underground/circuit one, perhaps like What Do You See?.
  6. ^ And black oil!
  7. ^ One of the Blake apas was Rallying Call.
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